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Michaela and I, we are going to meet the soup, which is on its way from Munich to Berlin.
The meeting place is a local called 'Seeblick' in Prenzlauer Berg a district of Berlin. After all the turbulent days in the mountains of South Tyrol, we're curious about how it looks like - the soup.
We start in vienna early in the morning, move over Prag, Sachsen and Thüringen direction Berlin, where we arrive as agreed at 17h. The soup is already here. In good condition, well nurtured and manifoldly enriched it has arrived about noon. The soup case has highly transformed due to procedures of Munich soup cooks. Now it looks rather widely travelled.
Runhild lives two storeys above the restaurant Seeblick. She's already waiting for us and tells, that the originally planned soup date at the Galerie A was cancelled by short notice. But no problem - as always with the soup - somebody stepped in. Runhild and Hartmut prepare everything for the soup and the friendly cook of the Seeblick allows to cook it on his stove until done.
We are here at the formerly eastern part of Berlin, amidst the historical center of the city. In the Rykegasse, you basically find sensitively renovated apartments in old buildings. Two alleys ahead, there is the Käthe Kollwitz Place and the Käthe Kollwitz Street; quiet alleys with new shops, boutiques, organic food stores and ateliers, a combination of big city life and charming of bohème. Not too far from here the Alexanderplatz is located, known from Alfred Döblins' novel of the same name, also known for the TV-Tower, the Marx-Engels Monument and the 'Palast der Republik'
The Palast der Republik is a huge construction site. 'Selective deconstruction of the Palast der Republik' is written on a sign. It's definitely a giant construction site, with enormously arising stumps of concrete, rusty steel joists, crooked rebars, deep excavation pits, refuse dumps and various heavy construction maschines. I ask myself, what does that mean in that case 'selective deconstruction' ? Does it mean, that one single mat footing or a lift shaft will remain in place as part of a new construction? If so, the process of selection has removed at least every outer appearance of the Palast der Republik. If the meaning of selective deconstruction is a principle of choice , here the whole building is chosen to be new built. so the description 'deconstruction' seems to be rather euphemistically. Of course, it's possible to call a demolition a deconstruction. So there must have been some good reasons to write deconstruction, instead of 'Demolition of the Palast der Republik'. But my question is, why do they demolish such a deeply symbolic, historical building almost entirely. I will get the answer in a few days.
This evening, while sitting in the beer garden of the restaurant Seeblick together with Runhild, Hartmut and some of their friends and eating the excellent, opulent Ryke-soup, the worst case scenario nearly happend. We have told the cook before, that half a litre of the soup must be left over to pass on. After eating lots of soup, it's time to go, Hartmut goes to the kitchen and comes back with a very small rest of soup. A tiny, tiny bit! Did the cook not think about it? Well, we agree to accept the rest of soup to be enough for passing on due to the fact, that the rice has absorbed much liquid and contains enough information. Hartmut pours in water, reboils, purees and sieves, according to directions. Soup is being recovered!
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